from 217 miles east of the San Francisco Marina

Daily Archives: April 22, 2013

“Why,” several e-mailers have asked over the years, mostly in reference to the old Blue Plate Special, “don’t you ever write about personalized plates…?”

I’ve revered the late RG-J columnist Ty Cobb from a time dating back to my early 1950s Reno Rec youth baseball days (before Little League), and it’s been a bit early to invade that popular milieu in his Cobbwebs columns.

Today we’ll read of a personalized plate that has prompted some calls and comments over the years. It was attached fore and aft to a late model Cadillac parked at Longs Drug in the Village Center a while back, so I laid in wait for the owner.

I first saw this plate in the early 1970s on a red Caddy, and often through the years on a number of intervening Cads, always red. I thought back then “How in the world did he get that plate?” Over the years occasional column mentions of blue license plates have sparked inquiries about this unique one from some of the readers.

Soon a couple exited Longs; a nice-looking couple who could pair in any TV commercial as the all-American, picture-of-health grandparents, and they fortunately also had a great sense of humor when this total stranger/drive-by columnist told them that the time was here and now, to speak of their license plate for a hundred thousand-or-so waiting readers. We talked for a half an hour.

A little background is required here: Before World War II Nevada plates used just numbers, and shortly before the war they received a county prefix, in our local case a “W.” Fast forward to the late 1960s when the connoisseur of all things automotive, William Fisk Harrah, wanted something a little more unique than “W23743” or whatever on the tail end of his hopped-up Chrysler 300. He dispatched his minions out into the hinterland with orders to bring the casino every plate in Washoe County from W1 to W100, car and truck alike (trucks wore “WT” back then), and use any asset in Harrah’s arsenal to convince the plate’ owners to cough them up. There were a whole lot of Nevadans winding up with everything from trips to the club’s Idaho Middle Fork Lodge retreat to showroom tickets for life to a date with Olivia Newton John in a chauffeured Harrah Rolls Phantom V, and acquire almost all the double digit “W” plates for his execs and truck fleet, Harrah did.

One such plate was W7, whose owner resisted early efforts by club delegates. “Do you like to hunt?” they asked. “Why sure,” the owner said, “but what I really want is one special plate.” “We can get it,” the suits promised. “We otter just hop in the club’s Twin Otter and fly up to Idaho and get acquainted. We’ll get you an Idaho elk tag, pack horses and a guide and have a little barbecue for a couple of days while we chat. Bring a friend.” And so they did, successfully. Harrah’s mounted the trophy head, skinned the beast and tanned it, and processed the beef when they got home. “Now, what plate was it you wanted?”

“A star, a simple, five-pointed star, smack in the middle of the plate,” said Swede Olsen, aka W7, and as a matter fact, as W76, for Swede owned the Union 76 service station at the Village Center almost since the center was built in the mid-1950s. “We can do it,” said the Harrah people, secretly wondering how in the hell they could sell that symbol to the Nevada DMV, but Harrah’s had clout then. The craftsmen at the gated community in Carson City that make license plates lacked a star in their font of dies, so they sent it to their branch office at San Quentin to be struck – a star centered in the field of blue, the ’69 stamp on the upper left corner (those plates were issued January of 1967 and validated with a sticker in 1968; 1969 was the expiration year.)

The new plates were returned to Carson City, and Swede and his wife LaRue (retired from Sierra Pacific Power Company) journeyed there to pick up their star plates in trade for W7. It’s been on four or five Caddies since, all red. The Olsens have pizzazz.

I asked if it drew any inordinate attention from the fuzz. Once on their way to Portland, Swede recalled, they were yanked over by one of Oregon’s Finest, piqued about Swede’s mile or two (or 15) over the speed limit. The officer gave him the usual admonitions and checked his license, but as the moment drew closer to putting pen to paper on a ticket he seemed to have second thoughts, something disarming about a sharp, well-spoken driver and his attractive wife in a new clean Caddy with a weird license plate that didn’t fit into any highway patrol computer. Who was this guy? He let the roadside visit end with a pleasant “Now you all be careful and keep it down a bit. My wife and I were married in Reno so I want you to enjoy Oregon.” Swede and the trooper were both relieved. (Spend five minutes with Swede and you’d learn he’d have just paid the ticket like the rest of us would.) “What happens if you get rear-ended and the plate gets mashed?” I asked. I’m sworn to secrecy, but an extra might have fallen out of the press that day in San Quentin, just might have.

That started the era that personalized plates started to proliferate, owing largely to, you guessed it, Bill Harrah, who eventually came up with almost all the low numbers save for one – I still smile when I see another Caddy streaking across Washoe Valley to John Ascuaga’s Nugget in Sparks, then parking in the Nugget’s executive lot – “John” on the parking space, W6 on the car. Perfeck.

Mr. Harrah was eventually able get the low numbers, yet longed to put “CLANG” on the auto collection’s cable car, “SAMMY” on Mr. Davis’ son’s Duesenberg or a lone “H” on his personal Ferrari Boxer (red, natch). He successfully lobbied the Nevada legislature for personalized plates, grist for a future column unto itself. Ty Cobb deciphered them for us in grand style, but it was Swede and LaRue who got the Star of the Show.